Dancing to the other side

Tuesday

Apr 30, 2013 at 2:49 PMApr 30, 2013 at 2:53 PM

My godmother passed away last week.

Michael Jonesmjones@stuttgartdailyleader.com

As I’m typing I can hear the clock tick tick ticking away the seconds as I try to coalesce my thoughts into words. Most days the words come free and easy without much effort, but today they are stubborn and want nothing to do with me.

Perhaps that is because they do not like the clock taunting them and reminding me that time does not wait for the right moment…or word to come. Instead, it just marches on regardless.

My godmother passed away last week.

An hour before she drew her final breath, her son Christopher had taken a photograph of his hand holding hers, which he posted on Facebook later in the day along with a rather lovely little paragraph saying that his mother had beaten all of her pain and sickness and was now resting peacefully in the arms of her parents, my mother and the rest of her family members that were no longer with us.

I’m not sure which was the more powerful of the two — the words he wrote or the photograph itself —but together they broke through my own fragile denial and it suddenly became very real to me that a very large part of my life was gone forever.

It was the first time I allowed myself to truly break down and cry — for her, and also selfishly for myself.

When I was a very young child I was — dare I say — a hellraiser extraordinare. One of my mother’s favorite stories was that when she came to pick me up from my first day of preschool she was met on the steps by the sight of nuns crying. They were crying because of how I’d behaved that day.

For the first few years of school, of course, my behavior certainly didn’t improve and, in fact, worsened to the point where my parents thought it might do me a bit of good to go to school somewhere else entirely.

Gertrude and her husband Howard, welcomed me into their home so that I could have that fresh start. Looking back on it now I think it was one of the most selfless things I’ve ever had done for me, but at the time I thought it was a betrayal by my parents and while I tried to temper my behavior at school so that I could earn my way back home — I also tried to make my aunt’s life a living hell by trying to run away multiple times and generally behaving like a spoiled brat.

Which, I was.

Though she called me on my attitude and actions each and every time and corrected me on them in no uncertain terms, she also greeted me each and every day with a smile and open arms and what seemed like a never ending supply of love and optimism.

At the time I didn’t deserve it but eventually it allowed me to pick myself up in both my grades and behavior and eventually allowed me to return home and return to my own school system.

She pushed me into deserving a second chance.

Later, when I was much older but still no more mature, I found myself kicked out of the house with (truly) nowhere else to go — so I did the one thing that came to my mind and I called her.

Of course, my aunt Gertrude opened her home to me and allowed me to live there for a couple of months until I got my act together and stopped acting like that spoiled brat from so long ago.

It’s a costume I wore long and well.

She helped me break free of that mindset and behavior, though. Instead of the blind rage I felt that just compelled me to rebel against everything and anything my aunt helped me slow down and see how much my parents loved me and how proud they were of me, despite my being such a screwup.

My aunt helped to wipe away the blinders I’d put up to keep myself from seeing things I knew were true.

Looking at the photograph of her frail hand — pale and yellowed and so very tiny — in her son’s hand, I very nearly want to throw those blinders back on and pretend that everything is still okay.

She would not want me to do that, however.

My godmother is dead, and I know that she would want me to accept it because to do otherwise would be to ignore how incredibly brave woman she was every single day of her life. Though lupus eventually proved stronger than her, for over 30 years she proved a capable dance partner as she took whatever it threw at her and perservered.

One of my favorite things she said in the final years of her life — when lupus had so ravaged her circulatory system that it forced the amputation of both of her legs — was that she was okay without her legs. She would tell anyone who asked that her “legs wanted to go dancing” when she didn’t, so she “let them go dancing without her.”

“Who knows? Maybe if I go dancing with my wheelchair I can meet up with them and we’ll all cut a rug together one day?”

I’d like to think that she was able to do just that, last week. I’d like to think that she was able to meet up with her legs and walk toward whatever awaits us on the other side of death — unafraid and dancing towards familiar faces.

Oh my God how I miss you already, aunt Gertrude.

...For those who read my columns I would like to beg forgiveness for this week’s writing. I’m sure it makes even less sense than my usual scribbles but I am ashamed to think that anyone would want to read such personal drivel…but I had to write it somewhere.I had to.